Thursday, April 20th 2017
Samsung, Amazon Unveil Yet Another HDR Standard
And here I was thinking the whole point of having standards was to homogenize offerings for a given feature, ensuring the same minimal requirements were met by anyone (or any product) looking to carry a sticker emblazoning its capabilities. Yet here it is, another HDR standard, which Samsung and Amazon are calling HDR10+.
The HDR10+ standard looks to slightly bridge the gap between the HDR10 standard as certified by the UHD Alliance, and the Dolby Vision one, which boasted better HDR reproduction whilst carrying higher specifications to be adhered to. The greatest change in HDR10+: the adoption of Dynamic Tone Mapping, which stand upon variable dynamic metadata to help adjust brightness and contrast in real time, optimized on a frame-by-frame basis, a feature present in Dolby Vision but lacking on the UHD Alliance's HDR10, which resulted in some overly darkened bright scenes.The presence of both Samsung and Amazon in this announcement isn't fortuitous: a hardware manufacturer and a content provider are, in this case, holding hands in delivering an improved experience and an ecosystem adapted to this new standard. For one, Samsung's 2016 UHD TVs will get HDR10+ support through a firmware update during the second half of 2017 (all of Samsung's 2017 UHD TVs, including its premium QLED TV lineup, support HDR10+.) This ensures hardware support for new HDR10+ content, where dynamic metadata needs to be included within a video file before it can be decoded, hence relying upon content creators adopting it - and Amazon is one of the prime content providers for the latest technologies. What a happy coincidence.
The HDR10+ standard looks to slightly bridge the gap between the HDR10 standard as certified by the UHD Alliance, and the Dolby Vision one, which boasted better HDR reproduction whilst carrying higher specifications to be adhered to. The greatest change in HDR10+: the adoption of Dynamic Tone Mapping, which stand upon variable dynamic metadata to help adjust brightness and contrast in real time, optimized on a frame-by-frame basis, a feature present in Dolby Vision but lacking on the UHD Alliance's HDR10, which resulted in some overly darkened bright scenes.The presence of both Samsung and Amazon in this announcement isn't fortuitous: a hardware manufacturer and a content provider are, in this case, holding hands in delivering an improved experience and an ecosystem adapted to this new standard. For one, Samsung's 2016 UHD TVs will get HDR10+ support through a firmware update during the second half of 2017 (all of Samsung's 2017 UHD TVs, including its premium QLED TV lineup, support HDR10+.) This ensures hardware support for new HDR10+ content, where dynamic metadata needs to be included within a video file before it can be decoded, hence relying upon content creators adopting it - and Amazon is one of the prime content providers for the latest technologies. What a happy coincidence.